Eimear Mcbride - A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing

Eimear McBride's debut tells, with astonishing insight and in brutal detail, the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. Not so much a stream of consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist, to read A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator's head, experiencing her world first-hand.

Eimear has suffered tragedy and loss in her own life after losing her father and brother to cancer. Eimer had moved to London and gradually, while holding down assorted temporary office jobs, she started writing. London is also the place she met her Husband, William Galinsky, Artistic Director for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival with its reputation for innovative, inspirational programming and commissioning. In addition to staging one of the most significant arts festivals in the UK each May, Norfolk & Norwich Festival collaborates throughout the year with local, national and international partners to produce work for a huge and diverse range of audiences, participants and communities. It was William's conversation with local independent publisher Galley Beggar Press that ultimately resulted in Eimear's book being published.